Recently...

Goodness, I haven't blogged in forever. Life has just gotten in the way.

I've been tweaking our homeschool day again and I think I have finally gotten it the way I want it.

I've made some changes to Robert's history program. AO 5 has been a bit much for him this year, so I've cut out a few things. I've also found that I really prefer that each week have a specific topic to center things around, so I'm using an adapation of the Truthquest American History II schedule I found at Ambleside Classical (look in her sidebar).

One thing that is encouraging is that Robert is very enthusiastic about his history studies this year. I think a big part of that is the AO books. They are wonderful!

I've also changed Ruth's Sonlight schedule to more closely follow Higher Up and Further In's Year 5 schedule. Lindafay has British history scheduled with this. I have replaced it with Robert's spine reading. This way, they will be at the same point in history next year, when I plan on combining them again. Ruthie's main focus is still the Eastern Hemisphere study, but she is learning the American History that Robert is, too.

We have changed from CLE Reading to a Total Language Plus study of The Cricket in Times Square. A childhood friend of mine is a rep for them and she was able to answer all my questions. It's going very well. I like the time we spend together working on it. Also, it includes vocabulary, spelling, and dictation, so those are finally getting done.

Our Art Project Friday has not happened for a couple of weeks. It seems that something always comes up. One Friday a friend called up unexpectedly to ask us to go to lunch with them. Then we had eye appointments. Our conflict today is a rescheduled cello lesson. I'm going to have to get control of this, but I can't quite figure it out.

In other news...

I had to share Robert's Halloween costume. He was Mario and it turned out great! (Can you guess why he's in that pose?) Ruthie doesn't like Halloween (she scares easily), so she chose to skip dressing up and trick-or-treating this year. She stayed home and passed out candy, instead.






Ruthie got braces this week. She has adjusted to them well. She chose blue rubber bands, but wants to change the colors for different seasons/holidays. Braces were not this fun when I had them.

You can click on any picture to make it larger. Please excuse the red-eye. I had to choose between fixing the red-eye and getting this post done. Posting won.

This school year is going by so quickly. Is anybody else shocked that Thanksgiving is only 2 weeks away. How did that happen?